


Fool

by mohinikapuahi



Series: AprilWotD [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Community: 1_million_words, Gen, Hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:31:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mohinikapuahi/pseuds/mohinikapuahi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if you can't remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool

Soft mechanical pings drew him back from the inky black silence he floated in. He could hear breathing. Not just his own. Someone was in the room with him. But as each breath drew him closer to the light he couldn’t quite reach, right now he didn’t want to get to the light. He wanted nothing more than to sink back into the darkness. In the darkness he felt no pain. It seemed that each time his lungs expanded the pain enshrouding his body increased tenfold. Biting down on the inside of his lip he groaned in throbbing agony as he struggled to open his eyes. 

A hand pressed against his bicep and Steve could barely contain the groan that bubbled from his lips. 

“Steve?” Chin’s voice was soft, almost tentative.

“Czn” Steve’s tongue felt swollen and heavy, no matter how much he tried he couldn’t push words out from between his lips. Every movement sent a shard of pain lancing through his body. Tears squeezed from the corner of his eyes as he grimaced trying to button down the pain that was controlling him.

Chin leaned over him and pressed the call button, frowning as he listened to the monitors connected to his boss starting to beep louder and faster.

“Steve, calm down.” Chin laid a gentle hand on his bicep and let his thumb stroke the skin gently, trying valiantly to make his touch calm Steve.

“Gacey!” Steve bit out painfully, bubbles of blood forming at the corner of his lips as his mind finally cleared enough to remember his last actions.

“We’ve got her.” Chin soothed him, “Relax Steve, Danny has Grace.” 

As Chin spoke, a nurse bustled into the room and quickly and performed her observations on Steve, finally injecting his IV with a dose of painkiller.

“Goo.” Steve sighed, relaxing back against the pillows, his eyes closing, his breath evening out slowly.

~*~*~*~*~

The next time Steve awoke, he almost felt like he could have at some time been human.

It wasn’t nearly as hard to open his eyes, and moving his head didn’t make him want to vomit. 

Turning his head slowly it was to see Rachel sitting primly in the chair by the bed. His brow furrowed as he watched. Her head was turned towards the window, she appeared to be looking out at the horizon, but he could see how wan her skin was. He could see the tear stains on her cheeks. Persistent tear stains. The kind that came from crying every day and every night. The kind that came from unbearable loss. Something was very wrong in this picture, and his brain was too muddled to understand or to work out what it was that he knew but couldn’t quite put in place.

He must have made a noise because Rachel’s head snapped from the window to look at him.

“Commander?” Rachel spoke softly. “Are you awake?”

Steve tried to push coherent words out of his mouth but gave up, so he nodded, one short slow nod, clamping his lips together to hold in the nauseous bile that filled his mouth.

“I want to thank you.” She murmured, “No matter what anyone else says, we may never have gotten Grace back if it wasn’t for you.”

Steve watched her as she stood and leaned over him, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. “I know what you have done for us, and the price that you paid. I can never repay you.” 

Rachel straightened and without looking back walked quickly out of his room, her heels tapping sharply on the tiled floor, the door swooshing closed behind her as she went.

Steve laid back, his bleary eyes watching the ceiling tiles, slowly counting the spots on each tile as he tried to take stock of himself. He couldn’t lift his head to look down his body, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to move, the only sensation that was left to him was blinding pain. As each minute passed his pain seemed to grow, becoming its own entity within his body, until all he felt was one throbbing, seething mass of agony. If a nurse were to ask him now where he was on the pain scale, he’d be forced to say fifteen, no matter how stoic he wanted to be, if he could even talk. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Time was fluid. He never knew what time it was. His eyes opened, his pain levels increased, they medicated him, and he floated off on a cloud of prescription opiates, sleeping painlessly until the medication had run its course. The only thing that changed was the person in the room when he awoke. There was always someone there, they never left him alone.

He knew before he opened his eyes this time, Danny was there, he’d know that scent anywhere.

“D.” he mumbled out before his eyes had even blinked myopically open.

“Don’t you D, me.” Danny jumped to his feet beside the bed.

“D?” he questioned, “Wha?”he struggled to push the words out.

“Don’t what me.” Danny paced back and forth beside the bed. “You know exactly what you did. You broke my little girl.”

“Gace?” Steve’s brow furrowed tightly, confused by Danny’s words, Chin and Rachel had said they had Grace back, what was Danny talking about.

“Yes, Grace. Why didn’t you call me?” Danny slammed his hand into the side of the bed, causing Steve’s body to roll slightly in that direction. Unable to stop himself, an agonizing groan sounding torn from the depths of Steve’s soul forced it’s way past his lips.

“Did that hurt?” Danny asked cruelly, he leaned on both hands and looked into Steve’s face. “Good. I need to know you’re hurting as much as I am you foolish bastard. This is your fault. All your fault.”

It was then that Steve noticed the tear tracks down Danny’s cheeks. This was wrong. Something wasn’t right. 

“Why didn’t you wait for me? Do something different? Why did she ring you?” Danny ranted, slapping the bed with every question, Steve taking the pain as silently as he could as if it were penance for his sins. Grace must be dead. It must be his fault.

“My baby, my precious little girl, Steven, she’s lying in a bed just like this one. But she’s not really there, you see she’s in a coma. They can’t tell me when she’s going to wake up. You know who put here there? You did. You and those fool super powers you think you have. You know that car you hit? She was in the back. My little girl was thrown like a rag doll across a highway and just missed being thrown over a fucking cliff, Steven. Do you hear me? You.” Danny punctuated his words with a sharp jabbing finger into Steve’s chest. “Did. This.” Danny threw his hands over his head, and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. Stepping back from the bed, Danny scrubbed a hand over his tear wet cheeks. “I’m sorry.” He murmured, “I just can’t do this anymore. I quit. We’re done.”

He turned and walked quickly out of the room.

Steve tried to absorb everything that Danny had said, his mind groggy with pain and medication. He had hurt Grace. He knew that he would never deliberately hurt Danny’s daughter. She was practically his daughter, too. Agitated, frustrated with his inability to remember, devastated by what he had done to Grace, his head rocking from side to side, moaning no, no, no. His pain was increasing exponentially with every minute movement. The monitors attached to his body starting to beep and chime, his physical reactions causing the alarms to sound. 

His consciousness started to slip back into darkness as a nurse ran quickly into the room.


End file.
